Category: Coronapanic

America’s science-following health care professionals and science-informed politicians decided that health care workers, police, and firefighters should have top priority in getting COVID-19 vaccinations. (example from Maskachusetts)

What about the wicked non-masked non-shut kids-in-school Swedes? Their Phase 1 is organized entirely around those old and/or sick enough to require nursing care. Their Phase 2 is for people 65 years and older and also includes health care workers. From the Swedish government:

How many shots has Sweden administered? About 6 per 100 through February 19, or right at the EU average:

As one colleague of Dr. Jill Biden has pointed out, the strict lockdown in the UK has been very effective at driving COVID-19 out of Sweden:

The same guy also looks at media analysis of North Dakota versus South Dakota:

NPI vs No-NPI in the Dakotas:

"How North Dakota has been able to drop its COVID-19 case count" using lockdowns and mask mandate:https://t.co/2TelKuaTFu

Meanwhile, South Dakota didn't lock down or mandate masks.

Check the difference and reach your own conclusion: pic.twitter.com/IVut0mx1et

— Dr. Eli David (@DrEliDavid) February 1, 2021

Circling back to vaccine priority… we are told that public health authorities make decisions regarding vaccines based on science. Yet science apparently may give the authorities in every state and country a different answer.

Separately, how important are vaccines? Let’s compared locked-down, masked, and mostly-vaccinated Israel to unlocked, unmasked, and only-starting-to-vaccinate Sweden:

Sweden seems to have had a more dramatic fall in the death rate, starting at roughly the same time, and actually to a slightly lower value than Israel’s. (But maybe this is because party-on Sweden’s cumulative death rate is 2X forever-shut Israel’s and there is a limit to how many COVID-vulnerable people exist in any given population.)

A final thought on the science of vaccinations… “Vaccine Alarmism: We look at the costs of vaccine alarmism.” (NYT):

About one-third of members of the U.S. military have declined vaccine shots. When shots first became available to Ohio nursing-home workers, about 60 percent said no. Some N.B.A. stars are wary of appearing in public-services ads encouraging vaccination.

Nationwide, nearly half of Americans would refuse a shot if offered one immediately, polls suggest. Vaccination skepticism is even higher among Black and Hispanic people, white people without a college degree, registered Republicans and lower-income households.

Friends on Facebook have cited this disapprovingly. They can’t believe that any young healthy person wouldn’t welcome an “investigational” vaccine that would be illegal to give as soon as a declared “emergency” is over. I asked one of these guys why he expected young healthy folks to want it:

• Him: because most of the information we have seems to show it’s much better than the alternatives.
• Me: Better for whom? Italy was one of the world’s worst-afflicted countries by coronaplague. 60 million people live there. Among those 20-29 years old, exactly 46 have died over the past year with a COVID-19 tag. You’re saying that a healthy slender 24-year-old Italian should take an “investigational” vaccine to avoid becoming the 47th person in this age group to die with/from COVID-19 (remember that, as far as we know, the 46 who did die might have been extremely sick with some other diseases, extremely fat, etc.)?
• Him: yes, to keep from spreading it.
• Me; Here in Maskachusetts, our governor assures us that the vaccine does NOT prevent people from being infected with and spreading coronavirus. “At this time, vaccinated individuals must continue to comply with the Governor’s Travel Order and related testing and quarantine requirements. While experts learn more about the protection that COVID-19 vaccines provide under real-life conditions, it will be important for everyone to continue using all the tools available to us to help stop this pandemic, including quarantining after a possible exposure, covering your mouth and nose with a mask, washing hands often, and staying at least 6 feet away from others.”
• Me: So you’re saying that young people should believe the government when it tells them that getting stuck with this experimental pharma product will stop them from spreading coronavirus. And they should also believe the government when it tells them that getting stuck with this experimental pharma product will not stop them from spreading coronavirus, which is why they need to wear masks, stay at home, quarantine after travel if they do somehow escape their home, etc.? (CNN: “Dr. Anthony Fauci said that Americans should continue wearing their masks and social distancing even after getting the vaccine because they can still spread coronavirus”)
• Me: If the government doesn’t trust the vaccines enough to change the travel quarantine laws, why should healthy young people believe that they will help the old/vulnerable by experimenting on themselves?
• Him: because they’re rational?

Readers: Do you expect your government overlords to grant any special privileges to the vaccinated? If so, when? And will these privileges be revoked as soon as mutant variant coronaplague is circulating?

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We’re about a year into Worldwide Coronapanic. Let’s make sure that we’ve been following expert advice. How about checking out Pandemic Influenza Preparedness And Response, A WHO guidance document to see what #Science had figured out regarding a respiratory virus after 100+ years of study. This 2009 document is an update of previous work and the update is a result of five task forces laboring for years. There were 139 experts who participated substantially and another 428 folks who commented.

We are reminded that viruses can kill us:

Influenza pandemics are unpredictable but recurring events that can have severe consequences on human health and economic well being worldwide. Advance planning and preparedness are critical to help mitigate the impact of a global pandemic.

(also that the only thing worse than a pandemic is a global pandemic)

The case fatality rate can be as high as 2-3% (page 13).

Page 43 is about “Reducing the Spread of Disease”.

In other words, do not close borders unless you’re on an island with no undocumented inbound migration (“in rare instances where clear geographical and other barriers exist”). Do not take all of your money and spend it on Clorox wipes. Do not wear a mask unless you’re sick or treating someone who is sick.

Aside from the above, the 64-page document contains only one other use of the word “mask”:

If medical masks are available and the training on their correct use is feasible, they may be considered for symptomatic persons and susceptible caregivers in household settings when close contact can not be avoided.

The document is silent on the disease-preventing effect of a bandana that has been hanging from the rear-view mirror for months.

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“A Grim Measure of Covid’s Toll: Life Expectancy Drops Sharply in U.S.” (NYT):

American life expectancy fell by one year, to 77.8 years, in the first half of 2020.

Thursday’s data gives the first full picture of the pandemic’s effect on American expected life spans, which dropped to 77.8 years from 78.8 years in 2019. It also showed a deepening of racial and ethnic disparities: Life expectancy of the Black population declined by 2.7 years in the first half of 2020, slicing away 20 years of gains. The life expectancy gap between Black and white Americans, which had been narrowing, is now at six years, the widest it has been since 1998.

“I knew it was going to be large but when I saw those numbers, I was like, ‘Oh my God,’” Elizabeth Arias, the federal researcher who produced the report, said of the racial disparity. Of the drop for the full population, she said, “We haven’t seen a decline of that magnitude in decades.”

The last time a pandemic caused a major decline in life expectancy was 1918, when hundreds of thousands of Americans died from the flu pandemic. Life expectancy declined by a whopping 11.8 years from 1917 to 1918, Dr. Arias said, bringing average life spans down to 39 years.

So… coronavirus was nowhere near as deadly as the last truly bad flu, yet the “scientists” in charge of life expectancy calculations apparently did not budget for even a moderately bad flu pandemic, such as 1957. They assumed that human population could be expanded from 2 billion (1920) to 8 billion (2020) without any virus evolving to take advantage of this expansion in hosts (and the hosts clustering themselves together in cities). They assumed this against a continuous stream of publications from the WHO and others that a pandemic was likely. (See Paper titled “Stockpiling Ventilators for Influenza Pandemics” for example; also Pandemic Influenza Preparedness And Response (WHO, 2009, which incidentally tells governments to do the opposite of what governments have done in response to COVID-19: don’t close borders unless you’re an island and don’t tell the general public to wear masks))

Is it possible to make these scientific conclusions, one about life expectancy and one about the likelihood of future respiratory virus pandemics, consistent somehow?

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From the no-longer-failing NYT:

As promised, Joe Biden has shut down the coronavirus. And, not only has he shut down coronavirus in the U.S., he’s defeated this pathogen on a planetary scale.

Should we credit the science-informed leadership of Joe Biden, Dr. Jill Biden, M.D., and Dr. Anthony Fauci, no longer told what to say by Donald Trump? Credit double-masking instead? (we can’t credit vaccines, right, because the downturn started before any significant number of folks were vaccinated)

And, if coronavirus is not, in fact, beaten, when does it start up again? (I recognize that #Science is supposed to be done retroactively, i.e., wait for the data to come in and then offer an explanation for the curve shape, but I would also be interested in 2019-style #Science in which the scientist offers a hypothesis and then tests that with later-arriving data)

If you’re confused, don’t feel bad. A medical school professor friend reminded me the other day that physicians still can’t explain why influenza is seasonal.

And, for those who are curious to know how unmasked folks in the Florida Free State are doing relative to the global average…

Compare to opposite-end-of-the-spectrum California, where 40 million people have cowered in place for an entire year:

And the never-masked never-shut South Dakotans:

What about the wicked never-masked never-shut Swedes?

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Atul Gawande, who works in Boston (though maybe soon in D.C., since he was tapped by President Biden to join Dr. Jill Biden, MD on a COVID-19 advisory board), writes in New Yorker: “Inside the Worst-Hit County in the Worst-Hit State in the Worst-Hit Country”.

How much can we trust a scientist like Dr. Atul Gawande, MD, MPH and the science-informed editors of the New Yorker? The article turns out to be about North Dakota, which enjoyed a year of relative freedom (mask law from November 14, 2020 to January 18, 2021) and experienced a lower death rate tagged to COVID-19 than 9 other states. Maskachusetts, in particular, where Dr. Gawande actually lives, has had a higher death rate than North Dakota despite a year of shutdown and masks.

How about the “Worst-Hit Country”? Can we rely on this Person of Science’s statement that the U.S. is the country that has been worst-hit by COVID-19? Statista says no. There are 7 countries, e.g., Belgium, Slovenia, and the UK, that have had a higher death rate.

How are Americans supposed to put their trust in #Science when there are at least two obvious falsehoods in the article’s headline? Or maybe there are three falsehoods, actually! The NYT page on North Dakota allows one to sort the counties of ND by death rate. Ward County, featured in Dr. Gawande’s article, is nowhere near the top: 274 deaths per 100,000, a little higher than the state average of 191, but nowhere near the worst in ND.

So… the headline contains three assertions from a scientist. All three assertions are false, as measured by the outcome that is most upsetting to humans (i.e., death). Said scientist will soon be telling Americans what they can and cannot do… #BecauseScience.

From my 1993 trip through North Dakota on the way to Alaska:

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“2 Tigers at Indiana Zoo Test Positive for COVID-19” (NBC, February 8):

Fecal samples for the tigers, Bugara and Indah, were collected for testing and came back positive with the virus.

“Bugara, the male Sumatran tiger, has been experiencing a dry cough, and Indah, the female Sumatran tiger, has not shown symptoms at this time,” staff veterinarian Dr. Kami Fox said in a statement issued Saturday. “Both tigers are being watched for any additional clinical signs and remain together in their enclosure.”

The source of infection is not yet known and zoo staff are working with the Allen County Department of Health and the State Board of Animal Health to identify potential sources, according to officials.

It seems fair to assume that nobody got within 6′ of these tigers (a reasonable rule along with don’t bring a slingshot to a tiger fight).

If tigers got infected while (a) outdoors, and (b) more than 6′ away from any infected human, why do we have confidence in our social distancing strategy?

A COVID-19-free tiger in the National Zoo back in the 1980s:

Related:

• Adley explains COVID-19 and works in the tigers

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From our nation’s greatest scientist… “Fauci: Vaccines for Kids as Young as First Graders Could Be Authorized by September” (ProPublica, Feb 11):

Children as young as first graders may be able to get the coronavirus vaccine by the time school starts in September, presuming trials are successful in those age groups, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in an interview with ProPublica.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has been “really advocating to try and make these trials happen with the same urgency that they happen for adults,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary, who is vice chair of its committee on infectious diseases.

It’s essential to act expeditiously, O’Leary said. “I would love to see a vaccine available for all children in time for the next school year.”

So a top pediatrician wants to stick kids as soon as the paperwork is dry from the laser printer. What do the folks who make vaccines say? From moderna (headquartered in the office building that formerly housed the MIT AI and CS labs; also, some of the precursors to the vaccine are being supplied by an MIT AI-lab spinoff that received $1.1 billion from the Trump administration):

If the product is not approved, what is it?

Moderna is committed to safety and ensuring that people have accurate information about the investigational Moderna COVID‑19 Vaccine, including how it is accessed and administered.

The effects are still being investigated, in other words, and the vaccine will actually become illegal to use if Uncle Joe declares that coronaplague is no longer an emergency, but if you’re old/fat/sick and worried about dying from COVID-19 maybe you still want it.

How about children? As noted in Maskachusetts: When people aren’t scared enough, change the Covid-19 dashboard, nobody under age 18 had ever died of/with COVID-19 in a heavily plagued state of 7 million through mid-August 2020. But it would appear that we need to revise Is it ethical for a physician to vaccinate a healthy 20-year-old against COVID-19? from age 20 down to age 6.

(For the record, as a somewhat old (57), somewhat fat (6′ tall and wallowing right about 200 lbs.) person I am mildly enthusiastic about vaccines for myself. On the other hand, when the dust settles, I think that the President of Tanzania will prove to have offered the wisest prediction: “If the white man was able to come up with vaccinations, he should have found a vaccination for Aids, cancer and TB by now,” said Mr Magufuli (BBC). Consistent with this leader’s prediction, I think that our fight with coronavirus will work out roughly the same as our fight with influenza. The BBC article itself is interesting. Tanzanians are stupid because they aren’t putting all of their energy, resources, and cash into fighting COVID-19. But roughly half of Tanzanians live on less than $2/day. If you lived on $2/day, would coronaplague be your #1 focus?)

[Update: I showed this post to a medical school professor friend. Who’s more like to be correct, Anthony Fauci or the President of Tanzania? “The Tanzanian.” Does it make sense to vaccinate schoolchildren against COVID-19? “Not from a medical point of view. We have no idea what these vaccines will do to their immune systems in the long run. It makes sense to vaccinate old people who have a substantial risk of being harmed by COVID-19.” Could vaccinating children cut down on the ability of the virus to mutate? “Yes,” he replied. “The more times the virus is replicating, the more potential for mutation.” (Which also means we’ll need border closures forever because inevitably there will be some countries where vaccination is uncommon and coronavirus is allowed to do whatever it wants?)]

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